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Congratulations to all the entrants and well done to the winners. This was an amazing jam this year with so many great entries and I'm always blown away by what people are able to do in a weekend and how different everything is. I'm still going through all the games but I've enjoyed everything I've played so far.

Thank you to the judges and especially to Free Lives for hosting. I really appreciate that you do this jam for us every year.

I know! For "research purposes" I tried to stomp a few people and saw they were safe, which I thought was a nice touch. What I meant in terms of sorry was that I'm stomping their town to bits and I'm enjoying it and this is right after I've just played a few times as a pacifist and discovered it's possible! (Guess that made me the monster....)

But I wanted to make a great piece of gothic art - just because! It had no function in the story, it was just going to be there to look pretty!

I'm glad you enjoyed the humour though.

I'm also glad to see you're around. I've been wondering if you're ok so I was glad to get a notification the other day about your new game, which I need to download (plus I like endless runners, which is even better), and then I saw there's a Bitsy game that's a little older that I didn't see when it was released so I'm looking forward to playing both when I have a moment.

I played this (a few times) a few days ago and managed to find an almost pacifist path to the keys if you walk along right at the bottom of the screen and I really liked that it could be possible to play this in this way so if you ever intend to work further on the game then a pacifist challenge would be quite fun. However, the sound design is so good that stomping around the city ended up feeling incredibly satisfying (sorry pixel people!) and I enjoyed doing that too, as well as all the little comments your kaiju makes while trying to tiptoe around. Really, really great game for such a simple premise and the lack of time you had to devote to it. Well done! (I love the art and animation too, of course!)

Ha ha! Yeah, ok, I missed that.

I have an old computer, which is the main problem, but Unity in general is just awful (besides all the spyware and analytics, plus how it leaves junk files all over a player's computer) because it ramps up the GPU on even the most innocuous stuff and that's been a problem since before my computer became "old".

I'll check the game out again once you publish the next update!

Thank you. I'm glad you enjoyed it! I feel as if I told the story that I had intended to tell, albeit in a very concentrated jam way. What would you want to see expanded?

Thanks! Bitsy is designed for a kind of cozy/handcrafted feel, as you note, although most games people make tend to be happier. (There are some other heavy or dark/horroresque ones, though, since you really can make any kind of game in it.)

One thing I would do is make each day a bit longer (more goats that meet and don't meeting the requirements) and randomise the goats (except for the first day, of course). Still fun though as is.

Thank you! Some people do not appreciate the aesthetic (and the limitations it and Bitsy, specifically, create, which can be very difficult to work with) it but it's always great to hear from the people who do.

Ah, damn. If you can get it up after the jam or, alternatively, see about making a new downloadable build with some small tweak because maybe there's just something in that original zip file configuration that's a false positive?

Cool idea. Plays a bit janky on my computer, as all Unity games do (if they aren't already actively trying to overheat my computer and blow it up), so I couldn't get a very good score. I have to be that guy and say that the sound of (musical) whistling really irritates me so be aware that it's something some people would prefer to be able to switch off. I also realised the scroll wheel was selecting things that weren't there, and then I got a fifth tentacle in one game but it sill didn't help (how many can you get?) and most of the time nothing was selected, so I switched to the right click in the game after that. It still felt a bit cumbersome though but I was able to play a bit better.

The water effect is really great.

Question, though: you might be the beast but are you the monster? If some aggressive whistling boats came into my sea house I'd also slap 'em.

I've played both versions. You've made some good improvements to the post jam version. However I still get confused about the mandates, I think because you just get used to a new day and the new rules and then it ends and then you have the next day and a bunch of new rules so your brain never gets enough time just to rest a little with one scenario. Also I find that the instructions for the first day are not clear as to what you are supposed to do about the third brother. I did appreciate, however, that you could read the current day's fax at any time.

I didn't like the South Africanness of it because it's only used in the dialogue; there's nothing else about the game that is in any way South African, so to me it doesn't feel as if it fits. However I recognise that this is a personal preference and others may feel differently.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed this very much and I really liked the art.

I didn't quite have the hang of the controls in the beginning due to the lack of directions and subtlety of the highlight around the controllable objects (plus, your cursor is often on an object when a scene loads so you don't realise it's highlighted) but I guess one could argue that it suits the theme of the game! I played through twice and didn't quite understand the driving bit either time, although the second time I got through it more easily knowing by then how to control the game.

I like pineapple on pizza but I did laugh both times I had to put the tomato sauce on the burnt steak.

In all, really good job for 48 hours and excellent work on the art, plus coming up with the collection of "mundane" offensive ideas you incorporated into the game. I would enjoy playing a longer version of this.

Thank you!

Yeah. It's easy (and fun) to write stories about beasts that you can other but if you look around at the real world right now it's full of monsters - they're in the headlines every day - who selfishly wield their privilege on purpose to make life horrible for everyone else. Thank you for playing and the kind comment.

Thanks!

I'm so glad you were! Thank you.

Thank you!

The name... damn. I think I only got it in the last hour (aiming for the 6pm "you're supposed to be finished" deadline) and it was so stressful because I couldn't set up the itch page properly until I knew what it was called. Nothing came into my head for the three days I was working on this and eventually I went through all the text I had written to see if there were any phrases I had used that would work and eventually saw two different bits that I realised would work together and it's also very on brand for me if you look at the titles of some of my other games.

As I mentioned elsewhere, in an ideal world I would have composed at least one track and added some sound effects but time didn't allow for it. A lot of Bitsy games also don't have it so it's not unusual for a Bitsy game, at least.

I'm so happy to hear that you enjoyed the humour, especially because I know it's not for everyone!

Is it? In my defence, I've never used the name before in any of my projects. I also just went with the first name I could think of that seemed old-timey enough without being stodgy. I was also tempted to make some sort of pun related to "Thomas Was Alone" to name the game but I couldn't think of one.

Bitsy has built-in support for audio but it has technical limitations that can be irritating for players and it's also very jarring chiptune, which is great for some games but wasn't appropriate for this one. I had intended to compose something separately so that there would be an ambient background theme but I didn't have time, nor have I tested the hack you have to use to get it to work and that would have been asking for trouble. So, sadly, no audio. Plus, as you note, the quiet does work for this game.

I'm glad you enjoyed the story though.

Thanks. man! That means a lot, coming from you. I haven't played your game yet but I looked at the page a few days ago and I was gawking at your dinosaur kaiju sprite's walk cycle.

Bitsy is built out of 8x8 pixel blocks (I had assumed it's something you would have played with at some point) so it lends itself towards really minimalist 1-bit(ish) pixel art, although there are some hacks and some tricks you can use to do more complicated things. It does work well for the story, though, yeah. Lets you build it in your imagination, which is even more disturbing. Thanks for playing!

Yeah, I got the same error as soon as the file downloaded and my system zapped it to oblivion before I could even look at it.

I would have liked some more narrative exploration beyond the fact that you are a skeleton so I don't think the game works very hard to adhere to the theme. Why are you a skeleton? Who are you fighting and why? Are you the bad guy or are they the bad guys?

I have a very old and slow computer so the speed was just right (I've seen the comments about the uncapped frame rate) but sometimes the controls felt unresponsive, with the character continuing to run, even though I wasn't pressing a key, or continuing to execute a move, which might be explained by the animation lock that someone else described but doesn't explain the running that sometimes got stuck. When it was working properly the controls were good and I was able to figure out a method for fighting the big enemies.

I really like the art and choice of restricted palette, as well as the animation of the sprites (and the parallax scrolling). Did you use an engine to make this game and, if so, what was it?

I really liked the art and enjoyed the music too. Well done! Nothing much else I can add that hasn't already been said - the enemies had much further reach than the art/perspective suggested and I was confused as to why the game kept going when I had deposited 20 gold but I've seen the comment now about the ending and the screenshot.

Thank you! That was the entire point I was working to so I'm glad it came across well.

Thank you, thank you! I have all the sprites blowing in the other direction too. I was going to do a some scenes leading up to the ending that would showcase them but I reined in my scope creep! The only one that made it into the game was Eleanor at the end.

This is good work, considering the fact that you're in primary school. The controls are really smooth and responsive  - I've played many, many games by experienced developers where the controls are horrible and it makes the game really unpleasant to play so well done to you!

I can also see that you really put a lot of thought into your level design, with lots of variety and experimentation, plus a few tricks! That is also really excellent work.

I laughed out loud at the ending too!

Please ignore the person or people who are giving some of the games low ratings. This is a jam and people shouldn't do that. You did really well. I hope you enjoyed making the game. That's what's most important.

Thank you. It really makes me happy to hear when someone has enjoyed my work.

I was hoping I would be able to make a comedy game and then they announced the theme so the best I could do was dark humour. Thank you for playing.

I haven't played your game yet but part of the challenge of the jam is figuring this out for yourself. So you have to think of the term "monster"  (you can look it up on various web sites) and all the different meanings it can have. You then need to think about how some of those meanings can be added to the story you want to tell in your game, or how a mechanic in the game might somehow hint at another meaning. For example, a monster can be a creature (which I think is what you did?) but a monster can also be a way a character (or a business) behaves that hurts other people or creatures. There are also other meanings.

Once the jam is over you'll see how people have done this in their games so have a look. Then, when you enter the next jam, think about how people in this jam thought about the theme and try to do that for your project.

However, for this jam, you still have time to work on your game a bit more if you want to and have time. Just upload a new version when you're ready.

Some people can't do 72 hours (job, life, whatever) so they are forced* to make a game in 48, which is much harder. The judges will then take this into account when they evaluate the games.

*Some people also just choose to do 48 as a challenge for themselves.

We are going to have to disagree but I have already given over 30 minutes of my precious game dev time to this so I am not going to continue any further, bar saying that you do not need to leave the jam. You are choosing to exclude yourself. You can open Twine and write a text adventure over the next 66 hours that requires absolutely no coding or art and it will be just as welcome as any other kind of game. You are choosing to build these limitations around yourself and then trying to justify the solution to your self-imposed predicament as being something that this community strongly stands against and, again, also weaponising neurodivergence  in the process. This community is full of neurodivergent people. It's one of the broadest communities in the country.

[I put a reply here in the wrong place so I've deleted it.]

I'm sorry but this is unacceptable and very disingenuous for you to weaponise solo devs, neurodivergent creators, and those without traditional art skills as people who are disadvantaged in this jam - and, by extension, implying that they are less than in general. That is not true at all for the jam. In previous years, people meeting all these descriptors have won categories and possibly even the main categories. (I'm not going to question who may or may not be neurodivergent but both solo devs and those without art skills have won major prizes.)

Speaking as a tech/games journalist now, and not a game dev, the local dev space is incredibly welcoming, although I will concede that it is far more comfortable at in-person events for extroverts; if you are an introvert, such as I am, it's something you just have to learn to push through, just like in the rest of life. I started participating in jams and started working on my various skills because the South African space was welcoming and people are very quick to share their knowledge and give you helpful feedback. I decided I wanted to cross over from being a person who observes the community and writes about its activities to a person who is part of the community and participates in its activities.

Now talking as a dev, I am very proud of the progress I have been making since I started making games. I participate in multiple jams every year and sometimes it goes very well and sometimes I bomb out and end up with a mess. (Admittedly, it is difficult - for me, at least - to finish something in 48 hours but for jams (Global Game Jam notably) that stipulate this I still try my best.) The purpose of jams is not about winning the money, it's about challenging yourself to make something and learn something. In some it's also about community (I presume that's what happens in this jam's Discord but I don't use Discord so I haven't seen it; before the pandemic the in-person jam spaces were really fun spaces and the best experience for me was the year I participated in the SA Game Jam in a team of absolute misfits (in the best way) who had never worked together and we ended up with something marvellous.)

One of those lessons is always about scope creep, and it's a very important one. I try to focus on at least one of my skills in every jam and have a personal rule to make something that has a start and a finish so that someone can play through to an (or multiple) ending(s), even if I have to leave out a lot of what's in the middle to do so (that's also one way to manage scope creep).

You obviously can write, so you immediately have the personal tools to create a text adventure. "Narrative" is one of the categories in this jam and although it doesn't mean "text adventure" - a fully graphical game can also have a strong narrative - it's a way for anyone to start and it's a goal that anyone can aim for. Same with "humour". Similarly, there are arts prizes (art, audio) for people who feel they can't really string a good story together but they can make pictures or sounds. Finally, there's the technical excellence prize, which is best awarded to coders but can suit all sorts of conditions since narrative, art, and audio all also showcase technical proficiency. Everyone is catered for in this jam; category wise it's one of the most inclusive jams in the world.

If you are serious about wanting to join this community and about making games you will be taken seriously if you step away from generative AI and vibe coding and actually focus on learning how to do things for yourself. (This is also true in the greater international game dev community where generative AI and vibe coding is not respected at all.) Everyone here has the skills they have because they've been working on them. Everyone started from nothing, they may just have been doing it for a very long time (often childhood), which is how many skills start. I had never drawn any pixel art in my life, bar some high school dabbling, until six years ago. It's just something I had always wanted to do but never did. I've been working on my skills all this time, training myself, watching instructional videos, reading articles, picking through people's work. I'm really proud of the progress I've been making. I also know I have a long way to go. Although I am a professional writer, it's all been fact based. Consequently, I've spent the last few years working on my narrative writing skills because I don't have much of a body of work in that area. I have a complicated coding history that I'm not going to go into but all I've been able to bring with me into games are the principles ("What is a variable? What is an array?"), plus HTML/CSS/JavaScript knowledge, which works in Twine. I have coding goals that far exceed Twine and Bitsy, which are the main engines I use. I will get there when I get there. It's all been intention and it's all been effort - but I will do the work myself.

You have to put in the work. That's what this community respects because that's what everyone else here has done. If you do, all the doors will be open to you. There is also a massive personal satisfaction in learning, and then improving, a skill. I really would encourage you not to short change yourself with that experience either.

I do not. At all.

Good work for 3 (+6) hours! I like that it didn't feel frustrating. So many physics games feel as if you're fighting against the game but this was fun.

Thank you.

(And, as @BVSSIC said, tight controls so you don't feel as if you're fighting the game, you know you just need to perfect your technique and that is possible with practice.)

I did wonder but somehow it all works. I don't usually enjoy physics games but, for some reason here, even when it goes all wrong and you end up in the wrong place and totally mess up your time it doesn't feel frustrating. I don't know why. Might be because the rounds are very quick plus the sense of whimsy.